


Stuck In the Middle

by DriannaHarper



Series: A couch, two soldiers, and a pin up [13]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Just Add Kittens, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DriannaHarper/pseuds/DriannaHarper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy gets herself into a lot of other peoples fights.  She's okay with that, she has her tazer, a great team, and a slightly scary husband.  This, however, is new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stuck In the Middle

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on the next serious piece for this series, but this story jumped me a couple of days ago. It's very silly, very fluffy, and entirely unrepentant. I wasn't going to post it, but I told a friend about it, and she said 'everyone needs fluff for the holidays.' So, here we go!

Darcy doesn’t know how she gets herself into these situations. But she does. She ALWAYS gets in the middle. Maybe she accidentally kicked a puppy in a past life, or was wrongly convicted for a hate crime against ferrets. Nothing else can explain why she’s sitting in an alleyway near Stark Tower next to a box of tiny, obviously abandoned kittens, a dude with a gun, and a take-out guy who’s in tears. She sighs. She’s going to have kittens. Literally.

She stands up and looks at the guy with the firearm. “Just leave, man. This will NOT be worth it. I work for the Avengers.”

“The FUCK you do, you-“

They can all hear the repulsors from the Iron Man suit getting closer.

Dude with a gun runs. The cowering delivery guy tries to straighten up for a minute. Darcy looks right at him. “Just say this- “Those Ty-Bo tapes really worked out.”

“Those what?”

“Just say it, dude. You’ll be a God amongst men.”

There’s a cut off shout, and the former wannabe mugger is tossed back into the alley at their feet.

“Just tell the cops-“

“Already did the spiel, Son of Coul. Do me a solid, okay? Do not tell anyone what you’re about to see. I don’t see Lucky, you don’t see this.”

There’s a chorus of tiny meeps going on, and she decides she doesn’t care about Tony’s ‘no pet’ policy. All she’ll have to do is turn up in Pepper’s office. Pepper loves… oh. She loves cats, but she’s allergic. She can ask Clint- no, he doesn’t like fur in the vent, he already has to clean up after the dog he and Phil pretend they don’t have.

Oh. Duh. She’s got a guy. A guy that won’t be back in the States for a long time, but has a floor on the tower that Darcy can use. One phone call later, and she has a recommendation for a vet and a palatial kitty home.

Jarvis informs her that it’s recommended that kittens as young as the group in the box spend as much time around people as possible, so they adapt to be comfortable around humans. She spends enough time with them that it gets noticed.

A week goes by, and James starts giving her looks. Hurt looks. She soothes him as much as she can, and asks what else she can do. His reply of, “Why are you gone so much, doll?” is shrugged off twice, before she caves.

“There’s something I haven’t told you, but it’s not YOU you, it’s Tony, and Steve- because of his allergies, we don’t know if the serum fixed them all- and… I better just show you.” She takes his hand and leads him to the elevator.

They stop on floor 84, and are met by a tidal wave of tiny animals. “Stop, dudes! We’re not ready yet! No elevators- stop the ginger, James!”

He only just catches the orange kitten before the elevator doors close. It tries to rake his metal hand a couple of times before squaring up to him. It REALLY doesn’t seem to like him, glaring into his face with as much menace as a 9 week old kitten can muster. “What’s this one called, Darce?”

Looking up from the rest of the pile, she snorts, “Oh, that’s Gabe. He’s a sprinter.”

Bucky bonks his head lightly against the kittens. After a moment, the kitten hits its head against James’ chin, and starts purring.

“So, where we moving to?” he said, “Stark don’t want ‘em in his tower, and you wanna keep them.”

Darcy turns, a kitten in each hand, and raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t even try it, doll. You have a splinter cell of tiny cats you want to keep. I’m not the one being strange, here.”

“I couldn’t leave them out in the cold, it’s just not right. War Machine let me smuggle them in.”

“You could have just brought them home.”

“The others all visit us without warning, and I didn’t… Tony’s been so twitchy lately, I didn’t want to ask. And Pep’s allergic, and I didn’t know with Steve.”

She sounds so distressed, he can’t help going over to hug her. He sets down the red striped threat, which takes off in the other direction at top speed.

“Are they all named after the Commandos?” he asked, picking up a grey kitten.

“No, that one is ‘Sleepy McCrankipants’.   I call him Mickey.”

“How about I take him around and introduce him?”

“Are you… James, you think we can keep them?”

“We live in Stark Tower, honey. I think we can probably do whatever we want. Wait, what are you worried about, here?”

“Tony said we weren’t allowed to have pets. And I brought a box of kittens into the building. What do you think?”

“Considering Jarvis is telling me that he’s ordered enough kitten care to outfit the entire tower, I think we have a bunch of cats.”

“Rhodey said we could keep them here. Tony’s being… weird.”

“Weird how?”

“It’s hard to explain,” she says, scrunching up her nose. That look, combined with the tiny animals trying to crawl up her sweater and into her hair, might be the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

“It’s like… I think he’s working on something he doesn’t want the rest of us to know about, and that makes me all sorts of nervous. Plus, his wedding to Pep is coming up, and I think it’s making him more ‘weird science’ than usual.”

Bucky looks at her for a moment, parsing information. “Okay. I have an idea.”

“Do I wanna know?”

“Do you have them living in a specific suite?”

“Not really, I just don’t let them into the one Rhodey lives in.”

“We’re going to wrassle them into one so that they can’t make another break for the elevator. Then, I’m going to get victim number one.”

She gives him a quizzical look.

“We gotta get some of the others on board before we set the cats loose. And I know JUST who to start with.”

The couple manages to get the wiggly brood into the suite with the majority of supplies, and then Bucky heads back towards the elevator, taking it to the Science! labs.

“Hey Doc! Can I borrow you for a little bit?”

Darcy ends up taking about a billion pictures of a giggling Bruce Banner on his back on the floor of the suite, covered in adoring kittens.

Bucky is quick to fell the rest of the team. Bruce creates an antihistamine that can be cycled through the Tower to combat pet dander. He and Darcy also get Jarvis to start working on a program that will allow the kittens to be tracked, so none get lost between floors or rooms.

They bring in Pepper next, who single handedly guarantees that the fluff balls will be given free reign of the common rooms once they’re old enough, and who manages to talk Tony into a better cleaning system for the vents without giving anything away. Because she’s PEPPER.

It’s Thor after that, because really, who can say no when the God of Thunder demands that his tiny followers be given the good treats and extra cuddles.

Steve acts hurt when he finds out they didn’t come to him first. And then Dugan curls up on his shoe and falls asleep after a fierce fight with his laces, and every free moment he has is spent on their floor.

One by one, the rest of them come to adore the brood, until one day Tony realizes that it’s been almost thirty six hours and he hasn’t seen a single other person. Normally, at least ONE of the rest of the crew comes to make sure he’s not about to create Skynet. He asks Jarvis where they are, and wanders on down to Rhodey’s floor. Seriously, if they’re having an orgy and he wasn’t invited, he’s kicking them all out.

When the elevator opens up, Clint is on the floor in the hall with a golden retriever. Said dog is pouncing the archer alongside a solid black cat, the feline only slightly larger than his hand. Natasha is looking at them in a way that means she’s laughing on the inside, even though her face isn’t moving, while cuddling a grey kitten.

Wandering to an open door, he finds the rest of his team sprawled over various pieces of furniture and/or the floor, a movie playing on mute in the background while they converse. Some have small creatures crawling on them, some are simply content to talk or cuddle. Looking down, he notices a small orange cat sizing him up.

As the rest of the team notices he’s there, he bends down and looks the cat in the eye. His tablet pings, and he darts his eyes to it briefly, before looking back at the ginger. They maintain eye contact, and the cat looks away first. This repeats itself several times, before the kitty rubs up against Tony’s knee, and then allows itself to be picked up.

He walks to an open chair and sprawls on it, tablet on the armrest, cat in his lap.

“So. When did we get cats, and why am I the last to know? I’m ALWAYS the last to know. Seriously, why do you never tell me things?”

Once started on a topic, Tony rarely gets derailed. This isn’t any different. It IS more adorable, though, because he never stops petting the sleeping cat for the entire 17 minutes they let him talk until the entire team decides to change the subject by talking over him. It doesn’t matter. The obviously superior creature that wants to hang out with him agrees, as the rumbly purring doesn’t stop.

**Author's Note:**

> This story came from this: http://themetapicture.com/like-a-drunken-snow-white/
> 
> The most recent theory for why cats ALWAYS want to hang out with the person that doesn't like them is eye contact. Cats look you in the eye, and if you look away, it proves you trust them enough to not see what they're doing. It just made sense that Tony's short attention span meant he'd be able to befriend the most finicky thing in the room. 
> 
> The Couch series is already not Ultron compliant, but I'm pretty sure it's going to deviate FAR from Civil War. Iron Man is my favorite Avenger, but I'm anti-registration, so I think if I try to bring it into the series, it'll crash and burn. Depends on how the movie spins it. But, be prepared for the series to ignore or rewrite both.
> 
> Happy Holidays, loves!


End file.
